i've never had an issue with giving outbound links from my sites even though i have read a MILLION articles that say you shouldn't do.
for my client sites i create a links page and that is the only place that outbound links are given, i feel that this method can ONLY hurt that page and not the site, i may be wrong but most of my clients site rank top 3 so i'm gonna keep doing it.
never link out from your homepage or footer, you are then just a puppet for the other site, having said that google adsense doesn't seem to matter or most affilaite links... don't know why?
BUTTTTT to contradict myself i have sites that internally link to many sites from many pages ( the sites have a long life 10+ years) and i have been told by experts that google THEN classes you as a "center of influence" if all the sites you are linking to are in the same genre business sector, and this seems to be true as my rankings haven't changed through the panda and penguin updates.
so man i must have confused you now ! sorry !
one thing i always do is make the site link , target="_blank" , this way the user doesn't loose your site and can come back to it.
tim